


jeno and his plants

by almondmark



Series: urbanct [2]
Category: NCT (Band)
Genre: Gen, jeno just likes plants okay, rated t for one (1) swear word
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-29
Updated: 2018-03-29
Packaged: 2019-04-14 09:18:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,376
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14132982
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/almondmark/pseuds/almondmark
Summary: welcome back to neo city! today we'll look at jeno lee in his natural habitat: surrounded by plants.





	jeno and his plants

**Author's Note:**

> hello!! :^) this pic (like the last one) is based off of tumblr user [@rxnjuns](http://rxnjuns.tumblr.com/) urbanct au! if you'd like to see more of those follow her and if you'd like to see more from me feel free to leave suggestions and follow me [@almond-mark](http://almond-mark.tumblr.com/) on tumblr!

jeno had been complaining about the lack of trees in the city for years. after he noticed the lack of the trees, he noticed the lack of grass. and then how there wasn’t a park. or a decent one at least. he never seemed to shut up about how he wished he could buy the empty lot those businessmen scum bought and then never did anything with. who buys an empty lot and then goes bankrupt?

he’d been talking about it for a few months before his birthday when his parents finally got sick of it.

“can you imagine how pretty the square would be if there were some trees?”

“why don’t we have a nicer park? this one doesn’t even have grass. wasn’t the mayor supposed to fix this like two years ago?”

“there’s like, two and a half trees in this stupid city. we’re the reason climate change exists,” jeno’s dad looked at him weird. “what? it’s true.”

“okay, bud.”

it wasn’t that they weren’t proud of their son for wanting to help the environment and help make the city look better, they just wanted a break from it sometimes. so for his birthday, they told his friends to get him plants. they were a little suspicious at first but they got some for him anyway. mr. and mrs. lee got him a spider ivy, jaemin bought an aloe plant, jisung got him a red-edged dracaena, chenle and renjun - mostly chenle - bought a snake plant, and mark and donghyuck got him a philodendron. 

“we thought since there’s not enough plants in the city, your little corner of the world can have as much plants as you want.” he cried. for ten minutes big fat tears rolled down his cheeks. he’s a cute cryer. no one is a cute cryer. _how does he do it,_ hyuck wondered. he could never be a cute cryer. 

“i’m not sad - i really appreciate these, i just,” he sniffed. “i just didn't think you were listening to me when i talked about it.”

a few weeks later he’d named all five with the help of his friends. he named the snake ivy snivy, “like the pokémon,” but no one appreciated it like he did. jaemin named the snake plant hyuck. he thought it was funny. donghyuck thought it was a little less funny; when he found out he chased jaemin around the shop with a monkey wrench. chenle named the aloe president zhong. the others don’t know where that name came from. none of them had ever called him that, but they let him have it. the philodendron was called philip. jeno called it phil most of the time. “it’s better than snivy, jeno.” no it isn’t. jeno only let mark call it that because he let president zhong slide. the red-edged dracaena got a little of a name and a little more of a title. a title that it had outgrown. well, jisung outgrew it really. they called it “taller than jisung.” when jisung bought it, it was taller than him. since then, he grew three inches and the plant only grew one. jeno is confident that one day it’ll reclaim the title though. 

ever since that birthday, every time someone asked him what he wanted for a holiday or his birthday, it was always plants or money. or pots for when his old plants outgrew the ones they were in. needless to say, he now has a lot more than five. every available surface in his bedroom had a plant occupying it. a vine spread across the headboard of his bed - sometimes he had to push the leaves out of his face when he was trying to sleep. snivy hung from the window and almost reached the floor. he has a cactus and a succulent (named jaq and gus) on the desk he used to do his schoolwork at. president zhong sat atop his dresser and in the morning when he was getting dressed, jeno often asked the plant for advice. he feels like zhong gives him some weird looks. phil stands watch at the door. hyuck the snake plant sits next to the dresser. it gives jeno weird looks too. “taller than jisung” hangs out outside his closet protecting his fancy clothes, guitar and ukulele. his other plants sometimes take up so much room he has to give them to his mother. jeno’s plant-filled corner of the world extended to his kitchen, then to his living room, and on the fire escape during the summer. and then he ran out of space again.

“nana kim, would you like a boston fern?”

“mark, if i give you this plant would you promise me you and xuxi would at least try to keep it alive?”

“hi, seulgi! the velvet is surprisingly lacking in house plants. want some?”

even if he gives them away he still likes to check up on them sometimes. jeno’s almost ashamed to say that’s one of the only reasons he visits nana kim. he does enjoy her company though.

when he’s home and doesn’t have any work to do - he still wants to go college one day so he still studies to make sure he doesn’t fall too far behind - he likes to talk to his plants. it took a few months for him to not feel awkward talking to things that don’t talk back. even if he’s not in a talking mood, he might sing to them. if he doesn’t feel like making a big deal out of it he just sits on his bed and plays some happy song on the guitar. sometimes he gets some plants, puts them on the floor and plays a cute little love song on the ukulele for them. 

he also reads to them. sometimes just things from textbooks. most of the time it’s the perks of being a wallflower. it’s his favorite. he’s read it so many times mark is surprised he’s not sick of it. mark is an english major. he’s the one who isn’t supposed to get sick of books, but he can’t reread books if he was payed. he’s tried to, but he could never get all the way through the second time. 

one of jeno’s favorite things to talk to his plants about is how he’s going to open up flower shop with jaemin and renjun after he gets his business degree. he wanted to get a building that had a shop on the first floor and an apartment on the second floor. renjun would have a studio upstairs and jaemin would help him downstairs with the flowers and other plants. the three of them would live together surrounded by everything he loved.

one of jeno’s least favorite - and his friend’s most favorite - is the first time renjun snuck into his house. at three in the morning. it was during the summer, so there were plants on the fire escape and on the windowsill and on the floor by the window. getting in through there he’d have to avoid knocking over the pots. and he did the exact opposite of that. at 3:04 AM he climbed up the fire escape. when he got to jeno’s window, he pushed the pots in front of the window to the side. he pulled up on the bottom of the window and moved the plants from there out of his way. he stuck a leg inside and slid half his body through the window. but he misjudged where his foot was in relation to the wall, and thus in relation to the pots under the windowsill. the toe of his boot went right into the biggest pot and before he could pick it up and catch himself, he was falling into the room. he screamed, and jeno screamed and the next thing either of them knew jeno’s dad was bursting in with a baseball bat, mrs. lee and jaemin right behind him.

“what the _fuck,_ renjun?” jeno said, looking at renjun’s boot still in the pot. and then he noticed how many he had actually knocked over during his fall. no matter how many times renjun apologized, jeno wouldn’t stop crying. _what the fuck? he really is a pretty cryer. no one’s a pretty cryer._

**Author's Note:**

> thank you for coming to my ted talk i hope you enjoyed :^)
> 
>  
> 
> [tumblr](http://almond-mark.tumblr.com/)


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